Welcome to the final installment of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Xbox 360 Extender. This time we'll cover exactly how to stream your DVDs through Media Connect to your Xbox360.
By now we’ve learned Windows Media Connect (the connection between WinMC/WinXP and your Xbox360) won’t stream anything but MPG or WMV. This seems like a showstopper if you thought you were going to stream DVDs to your Xbox360 Extender. But don’t despair, there are solutions.
If you want to stream video formats outside MPG2 or WMV you’ll have to do something called Transcoding. Transcoding using Videoras free Xbox360 Converter utility works. It’s a CPU intensive process and it takes a long time. Your PC will work hard for almost an hour to transcode two hours of quality audio/video. But it’s worthwhile if you want to have access to AVI, Quicktime, MPG4, DivX etc.
Note: There might be better transcoders out there, in fact I hope there are! But Videora’s Xbox360Converter worked.
DVD is a special case. As we know WinMC with a DVD decoder will play backed up copies of your DVDs. You just copy your DVDs VIDEO_TS directory and Windows Media Player treats it as the original DVD. Try and open your VIDEO_TS directory through your Xbox360 extender and you get the following error message:
Video Not Supported
Video cannot be viewed in media center from a remote desktop connection.
The workaround is a two step process:
- Decrypt the DVD movie, strip it down to just a VOB file.
- Rename the VOB extension to MPG.
First, your DVD is probably encrypted, most new material will require decryption. Also remember that breaking encryption is against the desires of the DVDs producer and is a grey legal area. This should be done for back up of DVDs you own.
There are many decrypters out there, like DVD Shrink and DVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0. You can probably find both utilities at www.Doom9.org. DVDDecrypter is very straightforward with lots of options. DVD Shrink is my personal favorite because I find it easier to use its myriad of editing options.
Using a decrypter you’re doing two things, decrypting plus making a VOB file of just the movie itself. What might be a drawback to using the extender to playback movies is you’re losing the DVD presentation. No menus, no fancy animations between video options. You’ll have to load the movie using Windows MC rather than the neat DVD interface.
I prefer DVD Shrink because of its re-authoring features. Sin City Recut presents a special challenge because it’s made up of several episodes based on the graphic novels. I used DVD Shrink to extract each chapter and create MPG from it and even put each MPG into separate folders with images for each.
DVD Menu system Episode selector:
I want all these episodes of Sin City to be a selectable video file that streams to my Home Theater system through the Xbox360. To start I used DVD Shrink to turn each episode shown above into a separate MPG.
As you see here, DVD Shrink has amazing re-authoring ability. I can choose exactly what soundtrack (Dolby Digital 5.1), subtitles (none) I want. I retain the original quality of the DVD because I am not applying any compression whatsoever. The file isn’t limited to the constraints of a 4.5 Gig DVDR.
A few things you’ll need to do whether using DVD Shrink or any decrypting/editing software.
- Remove compression. Allow files to be as large as they need to be.
- Disable the creation of VIDEO_TS. You just don’t need the directory.
- Disable VOB splitting: Don’t let your decrypter split VOB files. You should have an option to split the VOB into less than 1Gig chunks. DVD Shrink has this checkbox under Tools, Preferences. Uncheck it.
After decryption is complete you’ll have a directory with a VOB and other DVD support files.
If you select this folder that includes a BUP and IFO files Xbox360 will think this is another lame attempt from you to send it a DVD. 360 will say no dice, again.
Simply delete everything that isn’t a .VOB file then rename the VOB extension MPG. A VOB is really just an MPEG file.
Personally I like to find an image (Google Images are easy to use and about the right size) and add it to the folder. Name your image, Folder.jpg and it will be the image for the folder that holds your MPG. Don’t worry about the jpg not being centered perfectly, I like the off center look, it kind of has an artsy feel to it.
Extract every episode of Sin City in its full Dolby Digital 5.1, uncompressed glory. Now you can stream it through the Xbox360 extender. Creating a folder for each episode located in your main Sin City folder, you get a Microsoft Windows Media Center menu system.
I used an image from the cover of the graphic novel for each episode
Now, you and your Media Center can live happily ever after.
Troubles
It seems that people might have trouble because they’ve kept the extra files along with the VOB (now renamed to MPG). You can’t do this, you can’t have a DVD. This method just gives you an MPG video file. If you know how you can retain all the functions of the DVD and stream it to Xbox360, I invite you enlighten me.
If you have problems with this method it could be your decoder. Your DVD decoder must support Windows DRM10 or Windows Media Player 10.
Run Microsoft’s XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility. To ensure you only have the one decoder you mean to have. Delete or uninstall any extras you might have. Sometimes a bad decoder will get in the way and block the stream through Media Connect. If you have a decoder with any red Xs, even though your primary is all green checkmarks, delete it.
Also make sure you’re removing the support files that are found in a VIDEO_TS directory. Remember the 360 Extender won’t play a DVD so it will stop you from trying to send it those support files. Strip it down to just the MPG and a folder.jpg if you want to be fancy.
Transcoding.
I tested this with a backup method using the Decrypter then conducted the unnecessary step of transcoding with Videroa’s Xbox360 Converter. The result is horrible. Transcoding loses video quality, the movie had a too soft air brush quality to it. The sound was just slightly off kilter with the video so it looked like the voices were being dubbed. The audio options through Videroa are Stereo, and some controls over bit rate. While it might be okay for converting some AVIs or home movies, there is no AC3/5.1. This is literally a show stopper. Transcoding ruins the pristine quality of the DVD so, forget about it.